What is the latest year a remastered album has been issued?When did the mastering ideas and digital recording tech catch up to the point of the original master being sufficient, and not really requiring a remaster? Anything post 199?

In some cases, is remastering nothing more than a marketing gimmick to get consumers to repurchase albums they already own?Doesn't the recording and mastering process of the time link it to the era in which it was originally pressed? Therefore, as an unintended consequence, can't remastering an album take away from the uniqueness of the era in which it was first released?

Are there any remasters which you've found inferior or "less listenable" than it's original?

Some of the vinyl "remasters" of '90s titles that originally didn't come out in the format have been pretty weak. Usually, it sounds like the problem is that they didn't remaster them for vinyl, but just used the CD masters ... which doesn't work.

The Neko Case LPs on Lance Rock are all like that ... really tinny, thin and distorted sounding.

I had no idea remasters were done specifically for vinyl, furthermore, I don't care. Unless you're a DJ who mixes and scratches, there's no reason anyone in this day and age should be purchasing vinyl.

MadMind75 wrote:I had no idea remasters were done specifically for vinyl, furthermore, I don't care. Unless you're a DJ who mixes and scratches, there's no reason anyone in this day and age should be purchasing vinyl.

HAHAHAHAHA friggin' dumb.

Anyway, mastering for vinyl is a different process than for other formats (mainly because of the RIAA equalization curve that needs to be utilized for vinyl). So yes, mastering is done specifically for vinyl, which you have tactfully pointed out that nobody has any reason to purchase.

MadMind75 wrote:I had no idea remasters were done specifically for vinyl, furthermore, I don't care. Unless you're a DJ who mixes and scratches, there's no reason anyone in this day and age should be purchasing vinyl.

MadMind75 wrote:One can't even go 3 post's before the vinyl freaks come out of the woodwork around here! "Vinyl sounds best", "Laserdisc looks better than full digital 1080p" - NO!!! This isn't a format war thread!

Nobody said anything like that, of course.You asked about remasters, minicat offered his expertise on the matter, then you made a snarky comment. The only person who engaged in format-bashing was you. It's one thing to say, "I don't care about vinyl", quite another to dismiss a very popular hobby with complete derision.

If you ask me, there's no reason why anyone in this day and age should bother trying to help out MadMind when he asks a question.

I have no problem with vinyl from a collector's standpoint. I just don't understand modern releases being issued on vinyl.So how do they "remaster" something on vinyl? Take their latest digital master and make it try to sound more "analog"?

MadMind75 wrote:I just don't understand modern releases being issued on vinyl.

Because music on vinyl has better sound quality than music on a CD.

A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values).

This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.

A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion.

This means that the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound

Oh good god here we go. I'm pretty sure that if I looked around online, I could find a pro-CD quote to counteract everything you just wrote. But I won't bother.CD won the format war. Get over it. Hey, while we're at it, why don't we issue our new music in other obsolete formats like cassette and 8-track!

MadMind75 wrote:Oh good god here we go. I'm pretty sure that if I looked around online, I could find a pro-CD quote to counteract everything you just wrote. But I won't bother.CD won the format war. Get over it. Hey, while we're at it, why don't we issue our new music in other obsolete formats like cassette and 8-track!